The Bear Finally Came Out of Hibernation

[target2019]

I'm still down 26% from peak to trough. Can I go back to February 19th please. 19.42% on the year, but nobody said 100% US growth equities wasn't risky. Thankfully 129 more months before I ER, and likely longer before I ever need to sell. Everything around me is closing. Costco is out of TP. We will need some of that next week...mass hysteria has set in. As Agent X in MIB says to Will Smith... "A person is smart, people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.

https://youtu.be/WPMMNvYTEyI

edit, how the hell do you embed a youtube vid into ER?

The way you posted the URL is fine with me. I don't see much value in embedding the thing.

 

[kgtest]

Check the above URL (which you’ll see if you quote my post). For me I have to paste a youtu.be link into Safari which will convert it into a youtube.com url which seems to worked embedded on this forum.

I work in IT for a living. I guess I need to go read the vbulletin tutorial lol. Thanks for the help audrey! How's the weather down there in NM?

 

[Dtail]

Looks to me like we just gave up all of 2019's gains.

Yep, gave up all but 6k of gains from 2017, plus our losses in 2018 outpaced our gains for 5 months of 2017 when we retired.

 

[REWahoo]

I work in IT for a living. I guess I need to go read the vbulletin tutorial lol. Thanks for the help audrey! How's the weather down there in NM?

While reading the tutorial you might also want to look at a US map.

 

[teejayevans]

Day is not over yet. There's a 3 o'clock news update from the white house. The last one didn't turn out well.

Right, “buy the rumor, sell the news”.

 

[pb4uski]

Personally my net worth dropped to mid 2017 yesterday. But that includes 3 years of spending, taxes, and some major gifting.

Also, remember 2019 started from an almost 20% correction.

You made me look. Late 2016 to early 2017 depending on how I measure it* but the current balance is after funding 3 years of spending.

Gross investments? or net of mortgage since I used cash to pay off mortgage in late 2019? or include value of condo that we bought for cash that dinged investment balance?

 

[audreyh1]

I work in IT for a living. I guess I need to go read the vbulletin tutorial lol. Thanks for the help audrey! How's the weather down there in NM?

I'm in deep south TX - still pretty far from NM. It's hot here!

The thing with the youtube embedding and url - I just figured that out through trial and error. I do have an engineering background including software.

 

[Perryinva]

I forgot most of y’all are living off your stashes, so of course your totals are lower after that. I haven’t touched mine yet, only added to it, so maybe my back patting is a bit less deserved...

But today was a good bit of recovery.

 

[scrabbler1]

My tIRA, which is a purely closed system (no outside money added, nothing withdrawn), has lost all of its gains since May, 2019. A comparison in my less stock-oriented taxable account is muddier because I have withdrawn lots of money to pay my expenses. I am slightly lower than I was in late 2018 when the market tanked for a few months. I am where I was in June of 2016. Overall, I am where I was at the start of 2019. Not counting that low point, I am where I was in July of 2017.


What interests me the most is what the monthly dividend from my main bond fund will be at the end of March. That's what pays my bills.

 

[38Chevy454]

Maybe on Friday the bear had eaten so much he had a belly ache?
It was nice to see the big bounce back though.

 

[ER Eddie]

I got up the nerve to look at my balance, and it's not as bad as I thought. I'm actually just back to the baseline I set in Jan. 2019, a little over a year ago.

I recently retired, and this is my first big economic crash, so I was a little anxious about how my portfolio would hold up. Turns out, it did okay. Sure, all my theoretical gains over the past year are gone, but I didn't end up badly underwater like I expected. Granted, I looked after the recent bounce, so it must've looked worse a couple days ago. But still, it was reassuring to see that my portfolio seems pretty resilient.

 

[USGrant1962]

I got up the nerve to look at my balance, and it's not as bad as I thought. I'm actually just back to the baseline I set in Jan. 2019, a little over a year ago.

I recently retired, and this is my first big economic crash, so I was a little anxious about how my portfolio would hold up. Turns out, it did okay. Sure, all my theoretical gains over the past year are gone, but I didn't end up badly underwater like I expected. Granted, I looked after the recent bounce, so it must've looked worse a couple days ago. But still, it was reassuring to see that my portfolio seems pretty resilient.

Same here, I'm still above where I was when I semi-retired in March 2017, even after buying a summer house and two cars.

NOTE: those purchases were in my plan when I FIsREd.

 

[Perryinva]

Of course no one expected the bull to go on forever, and many anticipated the bear returning this year. It is a very psychological test of one’s tolerance that probably needs to be taken regularly as a test of actual resolve and portfolio resilience. It just sucks to see all those amazing gains of a banner 2019 evaporate in 2 weeks. Talk about the escalator up elevator down. But it would be FAR worse if this had happened in Jan 2019, eh?

 

[Old Microbiologist]

Not to rain on anyone's parade but I am a vaccinologist by trade and I can say with authority that no vaccine will be available before a minimum of 18 months and that is if there is a successful candidate now and everything goes perfectly. There is a ton of safety testing that has to be done before any vaccine of any kind can be used. So, expecting a miracle to happen is not wise. Yes, they could kick one out fast and accept the consequences but sometimes the consequences are worse than the disease.

Personally, we went completely to cash in early January. The signs were all there for an imminent collapse as it was obvious that the market was in a massive bubble. We learned our lessons from 2007/8. We do swing trades daily and cash out fast and have made around $40k doing that since January. Even yesterday we made $3,600 playing only with Amazon in and out twice. It isn't big dollars but it is safe enough. With volatility this large this is one way to use the market swings to your benefit. We don't short sell and are only doing this on the brokerage account. It is too volatile to use IRA accounts.

When it will end is anyone's guess. The now more than $2 trillion bailout money dumped into the market the past week hasn't made a dent in this. Confidence is gone and no hope in sight. The virus was only a trigger but it has a large impact on the world which was in a bubble and massive dumps of money are only going to make it worse in the long run. NOw they are thinking to just give everyone money to live on. The FED going to zero interest on Sunday was IMHO a horrible decision and now they have little left to work with except negative interest rates. So, I predict that is coming. The US GDP is going to take a massive hit and this is what defines a recession. It is happening and there is no denying it. But, how low it goes is anyone's guess. I had predicted a market correction of the DOW to head back to 18,000 which is where I think it should be. That is only my opinion but I will be surprised if we don't see it happening this week. It might go lower and we could very well end up in a depression and not a recession. The big question is how much leveraging of shady financial instruments are out there and can the banks support each other enough to avoid a Bear Sterns repeat. Banks stocks are taking a huge hit so the stress is there.

To fix this investors have to have confidence of a recovery and I just don't see any evidence of that happening soon nor can I envision something happening to make things better. Historically, the US government always starts a war when it starts to get this bad. So, that could be yet another looming black swan.

 

[natetheb]

I am taking full advantage of this Bear! Due to my current work location, I am getting plenty of extra money due to being tax-free so I am capitalizing on the cheaper entry prices. I opened up a 529 for my #2 and made an additional deposit in the 529 for my #1. I also dumped some more cash in my taxable account, specifically into S&P500 index and Bond funds. I am still making my regular deposits into my 401k type plans, but at a cheaper price! Yes, my total haircut is probably North of 25%, but I have many many years to go before I need the money.

 

[GR111]

IMO, paper losses are not really that scary as long as you don’t need to raise cash any time soon. I hate late stage market cycles anyway, with everything so over priced and no good deals in sight, so I wasn’t exactly sad to see us move on from that old bull. The last couple years felt like we were walking across a bridge that was going to collapse.

My thoughts and prayers go out for those working in effected industries or with sick loved ones. First responders and medical staff out there -thanks for what you do!

 

[hotwired]

Rebound

I let myself get distracted with diverting from my index fund course and have a dozen or so issues in $5,000 increments, well they're all $2,500 increments now, as they've all fallen by 25 to 50%. Lots of regrets MLP, BBC's etc. although I still kept the majority in vanguard Total stock market and vanguard Total Bond and the tips fund.

My question has I'm thinking of rotating out of those poorly performing assets into something that I think stands a good chance of coming back stronger than average. Another words I don't want to just liquidate them and put them in vanguard Total stock market because I don't think they'll come back as well. in fact leaving them where they are would probably be preferable. But I'm thinking that there are certain types of stocks that tend to come back much stronger after a meltdown.

Any thoughts? I may do I may be doing a second something stupid to recover from the first something stupid, but bear with me!

 

[Toocold]

My question has I'm thinking of rotating out of those poorly performing assets into something that I think stands a good chance of coming back stronger than average.

I think there are multiple cycles that are happening, exacerbated by the covid-19. I would look at the longer term trends and see if it makes sense. For example, oil and other energy stocks have been battered by OPEC+ supply wars with a longer term headwind of EV and climate change. We are at the low point of this cycle and I'd wait to see what happens.

 

[hotwired]

Thank you. Yes, anytime a sector gets beaten down to "once in a lifetime" opportunity levels (MLPs, energy stocks in general), there's ALWAYS a yeah but which makes jumping on them a little risky. (Otherwise every body would jump on them). I did already have my portfolio 'tilted' small cap, and energy (vanguard energy, MIE) which are down considerably. Maybe it's time to sneak a little more into Vanguard VGENX here and there.